Beautiful day at the beach... depressing to come back here to www-style... :-(
Somehow the discussion here hardly seems in touch with the reality of my
life. I will try to push on making the same arguments over and over for
people like Ian who keep repeating the same mistakes over and over... but
eventually this has to stop...
At 07:33 PM 1/5/2003 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
[...]
>| XBL doesn't _have_ any portions which allow non-conformance,
When your statement above is proven false with real examples, then I will
come back here and remind you again how inconsistent you are.
XBL can indeed allow implementation which will not conform to the semantics
defined by the HTML 4.01 spec. Just making a <select> into a <input
type='submit'> is very simple ridiculous example.
Even David Hyatt seems to agree with that to some small degree. My
understanding is that some reasonable people (not you Ian) in this thread,
such as David, John Lewis, and perhaps "Sandy Moss" are willing to question
to what degree XBL and CSS can create semantics which do not conform to
HTML 4.01 spec. They may not agree with me as to extent, but they
certainly have not stated (yet) what you audiciously claim above with no proof.
>| By your logic, CSS is "non-conforming", due to this rule:
Some of CSS allows implementation which creates semantics which is not
compliant to the HTML 4.01 spec[1]. My understanding is those portions are
CSS are by and large noted as "not required by HTML conforming user agents"[1].
>| p:empty { border: solid blue; }
A paragraph with a border is still conforming to semantics of HTML 4.01
spec. Thus by my definition your example CSS is "presentation"[2].
>| > You must differentiate between "conforming" and "non-conforming"
>| > meaning.
>|
>| Non-conforming meaning is, by its very nature, irrelevant.
That is an inane ('s' purposely ommitted) statement.
Every implementation is non-conforming to some small degree[3].
More importantly, many people could argue quite effectively that
conformance with the most popular implementation has always proven to be
the _MOST_ relevant consideration for programmers who want to succeed in
the market.
Your purest and unrealistic (out of touch with reality) attitude belongs on
your personal web site, not here in a major standards organization. Unless
of course you want your standards to be ignored by the majority in future.
>It is interesting and somewhat telling to note that you don't consider
>counter arguments to your statements to be useful.
I am answering your counter points which are to the point, as above.
>Could you explain why my list of features that XBL has and which XSLT
>does not is not "useful discussion" given the subject line?
Somebody else might want to discuss "features" with you, but for me those
are fairly ambiguous and subjective arguments. I'd rather argue at the
fundamental level, where we can _prove_ unequivocally as I have already
done[4].
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0104.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0114.html
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0101.html
See "_all_ implementations are not perfect and thus are to some small
degree non-conforming"
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Jan/0104.html
Follow all cited links in above link for complete reasoning.
-Shelby Moore